Our days at the beach never had anything to our life outside of it. As comfortable we were to each other we never meddled too much with anything outside that radar. That’s why it surprised when she kept on mentioning Sohyun, sometimes she would, subtly. I thought it was just one of those days again, because Sohyun wasn’t the first, but my total indifference to the subject had her stop after a time or two when she mentioned them. But this time she didn’t, and as thoughtful and kind Sohyun was to me I still had my indifference to her, too.

All of that didn’t have me expecting I’d see ourselves like this now. At a local mall downtown, where I’m pushing the cart in a route I had whenever I was here to but my necessities, while she was ahead of me taking a look of two different products of cereals reading and taking an interest in comparing the two with what it had to offer basing on the cover. This isn’t something we often did, or even did, this was something we just did now.

On my way to the local mall, we always had our encounters when she would leave just in time from the local public pool after teaching a class of mostly kids that were intended there to grow as athletes in the swimming field. And me riding my bike I would stop to exchange a few friendly greetings and a smile with her. And it wouldn’t take long till one of us excuses ourselves to go on. It was always like that.

But today I found her asking me where I was going. She asked me at that moment as if it was what she naturally always asked when we have our encounters there. She eventually asked if she could come. I hesitated, not because I was surprise but with the only option that she would have had to ride on my bike. Not that I minded if she didn’t, and she didn’t.

Climbing sideways on the back seat of my bike I felt her hand clenched on the hem of my sweater. Feeling the light drips from her soaked hair. On our short ride I felt her clenched tighter and tighter.

Now at the store, we haven’t said a lot except for a few questions here and there from our day and my list. We had a short-lived moment with her laugh when she was teasing me when I accidently told her about the route I always had here. I doubted that she had something she needed to buy and I concluded it seeing her continue her series of picking up goods, looking at it then eventually putting it back.